The Life of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert Browning

English poet, noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue. Robert Browning was long unsuccessful as a poet and financially dependent upon his family until he was well into adulthood. In his best works people from the past reveal their thoughts and lives as if speaking or thinking aloud.

"Be sure I looked up her eyes

--Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

--Made my heart swell, and still it grew

--While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

--Perfectly pure and good; I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

--In one long yellow string I wound

--Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

--I am quite sure she felt no pain."

(From 'Porphyria's Lover' in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842)

Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, south London, as the son of Robert Browning, a wealthy clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann, of German-Scottish origin. Robert Browning Senior had spent in his youth some time on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, where he becomes disgusted at the slaves' treatment. Back at England, he thought of a career of an artist, but eventually accepted his job at the bank. Sarah Anna loved music and gardening. The historian Thomas Carlyle called her "the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman".

Browning received scant formal education. However, his father encouraged him to read and he had access to his large (6,000 vols) library. The book collection filled most of the third storey at the family's house at New Cross. In his teens, Browning discovered Shelley, adopting the author's confessionalism in poetry. His first poems Browning wrote under the influence of Shelley, who also inspired him to adopt atheist principles for a time. At the age of 16, he began to study at newly established London University, returning home after a brief period. At home his parents showed understanding of his decision to withdraw and supported him morally and financially.

In 1833 Browning published anonymously PAULINE: A FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION. It has been said, that it was inspired by Eliza Flower, a performer and composer of religious music. First the publication sold not a single copy but eventually the work was noted by J.S. Mills. Between 1834 and 1836 The Monthly Repository published several shorter poems by Browning. In 1834 he travelled to Russia and made in 1838 his first trip to Italy. Browning's early poetical works attracted little attention until the publication of PARACELSUS (1835), which dealt with the life of the famous Swiss alchemist. From 1837 to 1846 Browning attempted to write verse drama for the stage. During these years he met Carlyle, Dickens, and Tennyson, and formed several important friendships.

Between 1841 and 1846 Browning works appeared under the title BELLS AND POMEGRANATES. It contained several of his best-known lyrics, such as How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and PIPPA PASSES (1841), a dramatic poem depicting a silk winder and his wandering in Italy. Among his earlier works was SORDELLO (1840), set against the background of restless southern Europe of the 13th century. It influenced Ezra Pound in his conception of the Cantos. However, Sordello's hostile reception shadowed Browning's reputation for over twenty years.

In 1846 Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861), and settled with ...

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In 1846 Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861), and settled with her in Florence. He produced comparatively little poetry during the next 15 years. When Elizabeth Browning died in 1861, he moved to London with his son Robert Barrett Browning (1849-1912). There he wrote his greatest work, THE RING AND THE BOOK (1869), based on the proceedings in a murder trial in Rome in 1698. It consisted of 10 verse narratives, all dealing with the same crime, each from a distinct viewpoint. Browning made poetry compete with prose, and used idioms of ordinary speech in his text. A typical Browning poem tells of a key moment in tye life of a prince, priest or painter of the Italian Renaissance. He often crammed his meaning into so few words that many readers could not grasp what he meant.

In the 1850s and 1860s Browning's reputation began to revive. In 1855 appeared the masterpiece of his middle period, MEN AND WOMEN. With DRAMATIS PERSONAE (1864) and The Ring and the Book he was back in the literary scene. In 1866, after his father died, Browning lived with his sister, generally spending the season in London, and the rest of the year in the country or abroad. In the 1870s Browning published several works, including THE INN ALBUM (1875), a dramatic poems, where two couples use the the visitors' book to convey messages, and a translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Browning Society was founded in 1881 as an indication of the poets status as a sage and celebrity.

Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889 in Venice in his son's house. Various difficulties made the poet's requested burial in Florence impossible, and his body was returned to England to be interred in Westminster Abbey. Browning's narrative poem, 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came', has inspired Stephen King's King's Dark Tower series, which started in 1982 with The Gunslinger

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861))

English poet, the wife of Robert Browning, the most respected and successful woman poet of the Victorian period. Elizabeth Browning was considered seriously for the laureateship that eventually was awarded to Tennyson in 1850. Her greatest work, SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE (1850), is a sequence of love sonnets addresses to her husband. Browning's vivid intelligence and ethereal physical appearance made a lifelong impression to Ruskin, Carlyle, Thackeray, Rossetti, Hawthorne, and many others.

"What do we give to out beloved?

A little faith all undisproved

A little dust to overweep,

And bitter memories to make

The whole earth blasted for our sake.

He giveth His beloved, sleep."

(from 'The Sleep')

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born at Coxhoe Hall, near Durham. Her father was Edward Moulton-Barrett, whose wealth was derived from sugar plantations in the British colony of Jamaica. Mary Graham-Clarke, her mother, came from a family with similar commercial interests. Elizabeth grew up in the west of England and was largely educated at home by a tutor, quickly learning French, Latin and Greek. Both parents supported her early writing and many of her birthday odes to her parents and siblings still survive. At the age of 14, she wrote her first collection of verse, THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. It was followed by AN ESSAY ON MIND (1826), privately printed at her father's expense. Her translation of PROMETHEUS BOUND (1833) with other poems appeared anonymously. Browning's first work to gain critical attention was THE SERAPHIM, AND OTHER POEMS (1838).

In the early 1820s, she started to suffer from a mysterious illness, as if there were a cord tied around her stomach "which seems to break", as she said. The doctors found nothing wrong with her gynaecological, but she was long an invalid, using morphine for the pains for the rest of her life. At that time, laudanum or morphine was commonly prescribed for many illnesses. Her drug habit also helped her to cope with family problems. However, once she confessed: "Opium - opium - night after night! - and some evenings even opium won't do". In 1832 the Barrett family moved to Sidmouth and in 1835 to London, where she began to contribute several periodicals. Her family was still wealthy, but after a lawsuit the property and slaves in Jamaica from Edward Barrett's grandfather did not go directly in the hand of Edward and his brother. The court decision favoured their cousins, the Goodin Barretts. In 1838, seriously ill as a result of a broken blood-vessel, Elizabeth was sent to Torquay. After the death of her brother, who drowned in Torqauy, she developed almost morbid fear of meeting anyone, and devoted herself entirely to literature. She did not publish her picture in her books. Once she described herself to a painter: "I am 'little & black' like Sappho, en attendant the immortality - five feet one high... eyes of various colours as the sun shines... & set down by myself (according to my 'private view' in the glass) as dark-green-brown - grounded with brown, & green otherwise; what is called 'invisible green' in invisible garden fences... Not much nose of any kind; certes no superfluity of nose; but to make up for it, a mouth suitable to larger personality - oh, and a very little voice."

When her POEMS (1844) appeared, it gained a huge popularity and was praised among others by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Elizabeth Browning's name was mentioned six years later in speculations about the successor of Wordsworth as the poet laureate.

"Yes," I answered you last night;

"No," this morning, sir, I say:

Colors seen by candlelight

Will not look the same by day.

(From 'The Lady's "Yes"', 1844)

At the age of 39 she started a correspondence with the six year younger poet Robert Browning, who knew well her work. Their courtship was kept a close secret from her father, who had forbidden all 12 of his sons and daughters to marry. Next year she ran away from her home. In September 1846 she married Robert Browning in a church near Wimpole Street. The couple settled a week later in Florence. Casa Guide became the base of their life, although the Browning's also visited Rome, Siena, Bagni di Lucca, Paris, and London. Their only child, Robert Wiedemann (known as Penini), was born in 1849.

Elizabeth Browning became supporter of Italian independence movement, which she advocated in CASA GUIDI WINDOWS (1851). She also opposed slavery in her books THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT PILGRIM'S POINT (1849) and in the political POEMS BEFORE CONGRESS (1860). Browning's family had treated their slaves well. Her magnum opus, AURORA LEIGHT (1857), was a novel in blank verse about a woman writer, her childhood and pursuit of a literary career. It also dealt such themes as the poet's mission, social responsibilities, and the position of women. LAST POEMS (1862), issued posthumously, and contained some of her best-known lyrics.

In her late years, Elisabeth Browning developed an interest in spiritualism. She died, romantically, in her husband's arms on June 29, 1861 in Florence. After her death the writer Edward Fitzgerald expressed no sorrow in his famous letter: ''Mrs. Browning's Death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all? She and her Sex had better mind the Kitchen and their Children: and perhaps the Poor: except in such things as little Novels, they only devote themselves to what Men do much better, leaving that which Men do worse or not at all.'' Among Browning's best known lyrics is Sonnets from the Portuguese - the 'Portugese' being her husband's pet name for dark-haired Elizabeth, but it could refer to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luiz de Camões. It first appeared in a collected edition in 1850. The work includes the sonnet which begins with the well-known line, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways".

Nay, if there's room for poets in this world

A little overgrown (I think there is),

Their sole work is to represent the age,

Their age, not Charlemagne's.